The Observer (UK)'s Scores

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For 1,641 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Enys Men
Lowest review score: 20 Book Club: The Next Chapter
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 894 out of 1641
  2. Mixed: 714 out of 1641
  3. Negative: 33 out of 1641
1641 movie reviews
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    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    See How They Run
    It’s a fine, if mild, escapist hoot.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Gone to Earth
    Carefully restored Powell and Pressburger minor masterpiece in glowing Technicolor, doing more than justice to Mary Webb's melodramatic sub-Hardy novel of late Victorian Shropshire. [05 Aug 2001, p.9]
    • The Observer (UK)
  3. Wolfs
    A film that erases itself so thoroughly from your memory, it’s almost as if Pitt and Clooney had performed one of their bespoke clean-up services on your brain.
  4. The Angry Birds Movie 2
    Cameos from Awkwafina, Nicki Minaj and Pete Davidson, and a subplot involving a trio of adorable hatchlings, are amusing diversions, but Jones’s dynamic voice work is the highlight.
  5. XY Chelsea
    Hawkins seems beguiled by Manning’s natural charisma, and more interested in the highs and lows of her personal reckoning. These are fascinating in their own right, yet more context might have made this feel like more of a definitive portrait.
  6. The Many Saints of Newark
    It’s undeniably entertaining stuff, but this choppy collage-style portrait of the formative figures in the life of the young Tony Soprano (Michael Gandolfini) is better suited to the needs of existing fans rather than those of Sopranos neophytes.
  7. Mary Queen of Scots
    While Ronan is terrific, Robbie has arguably the more difficult role, conjuring an engaging portrait of someone whose position has made her “more man than woman”.
  8. Bank of Dave
    Rory Kinnear gives a robustly likable performance as Dave, somewhat redeeming this unashamedly formulaic crowd-pleaser.
  9. Medusa Deluxe
    Mainly, though, the problem lies with a screenplay that fails to create suspense, or even to persuade us to care who killed a brilliant but unpopular hair stylist. Still, credit to the hair and costume design team for a collection of extravagantly silly creations.
  10. Scream
    While this is the smartest, funniest and stabbiest film since the 1996 original, it does feel as though Scream has come full circle, an ouroboros serpent of a franchise that is destined to endlessly devour itself until those testy toxic fans finally lose patience.
  11. Lightyear
    The aspect that’s traditionally elevated Pixar animations, the dizzy wit and inventiveness of the screenplay, is missing from this dispiriting trudge through outer space, via some box-ticking messaging along the way.
  12. Good Boys
    It’s not unfunny, but one joke can’t sustain the entire movie.
  13. Motherless Brooklyn
    Motherless Brooklyn is a curious near miss that can be both applauded and criticised for its boundless ambition.
  14. The Whale
    The film sets out to repulse us, and it frequently succeeds. It would be easy, and tempting, to dismiss it out of hand. But that would be to disregard its redeeming strength – the authentically knotty characters and the performances that inhabit them.
  15. Crawl
    The scenes of family bonding are tiresome but the action is mostly tense and cheerfully bloody.
  16. The Mercy
    Unlike the steely resilience in the face of disaster of Robert Redford’s character in All Is Lost, watching Crowhurst slowly crack is the cinema equivalent of filling your pockets with pebbles and chucking yourself into the Solent.
  17. Matthias & Maxime
    Ultimately, the revelation here is not so much Dolan’s more contemplative approach to film-making, but the subtlety and sensitivity of his performance.
  18. Stillwater
    Directed by Oscar-winner Tom McCarthy (Spotlight), this is a thoughtful, knotty character study, albeit one nestled inside a polished, and less interesting, action thriller.
  19. Wonder Woman 1984
    While some sections of the globe-trotting plot strike a baggy, backward-looking note, it’s the smaller moments that make this fly, particularly when the film uses fantasy to turn horribly real everyday harassments into moments of air-punching triumph.
  20. Bad Times at the El Royale
    In its better moments, this studio oddity is a tense thriller, at its worst, draggy and self-indulgent.
  21. Three Thousand Years of Longing
    There’s something rather sterile and bloodless in the film’s approach, with its synthetic and soul-sappingly clean-looking CGI. Plus there’s the palpable lack of chemistry between the leads: a kind of brisk civility rather than the ache of eternal longing the title promises.
  22. Jumbo
    Merlant’s performance is committed, and the film takes her romantic and sexual fixation with the ride seriously, immersing the viewer in her dazzling, neon-lit world.
  23. Saw X
    Grisliness occurs, accompanied by a score that sounds like knives being sharpened on violins. It’s thoroughly unpleasant, but that’s rather the point.
  24. Bad Tales
    Parental indifference is not attuned to the looming tragedy in this horribly compelling fable.
  25. The Aeronauts
    Inspired by real events, the film is at its best when it leans into the action-adventure genre; director Tom Harper smartly uses camera-shake and closeups to immerse the audience in the weather’s volatility.
  26. Little Joe
    For some, Little Joe may seem too sterile to engage emotionally, but I found it glassily unsettling – even more so on second viewing. Inhale at your peril.
  27. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
    Sometimes there is pleasure to be found in brainless action, but the extended video game-style finale left me furious and fatigued.
  28. Smallfoot
    The songs are a bum note, but the film does raise thoughtful questions about dogma, fake news and the identity crises that might occur once a community’s core beliefs are challenged.
  29. House of Gucci
    For better or worse, House of Gucci is a little too well behaved to become a cult classic. But Gaga deserves a gong for steering a steely path through the madness – for richer, not poorer; in kitschness and in wealth.
  30. Being the Ricardos
    The film is obsessed with deconstructing good screenwriting, the way a line lands, and ensuring clear character motivation.
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